Can men & women be just "friends?"

Just as we have a complicated relationship with the idea of “love”, we have a similarly complicated one with “sex”. Our culture is so tied up with mixed messages about sex and sexuality that we can’t keep them all straight. Sex is dirty and wrong and only bad people have it… so save it for marriage kiddos. Sex is awesome and we should be having it all the time… but someone, especially a woman, who likes sex too much has something wrong with them. The only way for women to be valued is to be sexy, but being sexy or sexualdeliberately is a cause for scorn and shame.

The idea that sexual desire can exist independently from an emotional relationship is one that a lot of people have issues wrapping their heads around. Sexual desire is of the body while affection – romantic or otherwise – is of the mind. Sex is peanut butter and love is chocolate – they go together amazingly well, but one can have one without the other or without mixing the two together. Some people are great at compartmentalization while others are not… but this doesn’t mean that the existence of sexual interest in one friend or the other spells the doom of the friendship.

The idea that men and women can’t be “just” friends presumes that the fact that an attraction means that it is automatically unacknowledged… or that it will inevitably be enacted upon. Yet in the real world, friends can acknowledge an attraction – whether one-sided or mutual – without destroying things. It’s entirely possible for a couple to say “Yeah, we know it would never work out and we don’t want to risk ruining our friendship with an ugly break-up”. Men (or women) are quite capable of being attracted to someone and keeping that attraction to the realm of fantasy or “it would be fun if…” without actively trying to pursue it.

It’s when one or the other has an agenda that attraction ultimately ruins a friendship. When somebody enters into a friendship under false pretenses – attempting the Platonic Friend Back Door Gambit – they are using the guise of friendship in selfish hope of getting what they want. If you’re only maintaining friendships with people you’re attracted to in the hopes of someday getting together with them or wearing them down – what I call the Big Lie From A “Nice” Guy – then you’re not actually their friend, you’re just an asshole.

Friendship – real friendship – can encompass sex or love without being “ruined”, so long as everybody is honest with one another and willing to act like adults. If only one was mature about it....